We Have Trajectories

Mike’s fresh on the job, second day, and I want to like him, I do. Guy’s got that sweet Indiana vibe. Call it farmboy. Straw hair, sun-kissed cheekbones, a surety of work ethic in oversized forearms. Leave it to me, however, to notice any possible decrepitude. How the eyelids flag, say. Every glance I take, they’re sinking in some autonomous abandon. When I can’t hold back another second, I set my voice to playfully curious and ask if he’s stoned. No, the guy tells me, and knowingly smiles. With zero trace of offense he gives the fleshly little curtains a tug and declares they were too long. Were? Yes. He says he had surgery to stem the lids’ growth—had it not for him, but for others. “Though maybe you’re right, and maybe I need more?”

“Please,” I say. “No.”

Though how long can eyelids grow? A question far beyond my repertoire when I awoke this blurred and lonely morning. That was then, however, and now it’s a manner of stalwart camaraderie. We work our shift in solid and perfect union. Our brushes, our rags, our shit-for-nothing pay, everything’s about shared strength. On break, we split a Twix, and then it’s back at it, exchanging furtive nods over bullheaded drivers, winks at distinct and favorable changes of wind. But it’s the truth of how I alone understand when he’s winking that fills me with a tremendous sense of inclusion. So subtle, the actions of these gentle-big lids. Frankly, in his presence I breathe cleanly. It’s in how my muscles simply glide, because of his minimalism. Mike is nuance, that’s my point. The way I’m so content in his contentment. Because I barely know this fellow and he’s mine. It’s like Turbo, my goldfish that only masticates when inverted. And where it used to be I told everyone about Turbo, how he’s not sick, how it’s not that at all, now it’s So my good buddy at work….

In a week, Mike stops showing. Crushed and panicked only barely covers it. Three days I wait before unearthing a phone number from his grimed application. But it’s not Mike in that narrow distance. There’s a raucous gaming in the background, sounds of large-headed children in brutally electronic combat and this person on the phone, this woman downstage, who’s extremely polite. By this I mean thirsty. I mean fool-hardily gracious. I want tell her to be more wary but she calls me Sir in some romantic Canadian slur and this renders me irenic. Wanting to move my phone from ear to pocket, I cannot; a force in my deepest reserve of pathos resists. I’m picturing a small space between my heart and lung, and there this gal sits, smiling, hands cupped gently to her ears so I’m trapped underneath, a still, still bug.

What number, she asks, did I mean to call?

It takes great energy to speak, but I do. And I give each syllable. Number and number and number. But still I’m a broken whimper. With each push of sound I’m filled with an ever-creeping fear that our conversation means zilch in the size of our world. So then things get filthy. It’s when she confirms my mistake. Not only confirms it but softly laughs while letting me know that she herself scribes things incorrectly at least once a day. And here my speech unlocks. I’m saying too much now, saying, Oh, I hear you! I hear you! Tell me about it! But all the while I’ve got a view of Mike there on her couch, with a hand mirror, yes, a mirror in fast fist and Q-tips scattering the coffee table. Rubber-handled needle-nose pliers, too. They’re so-properly sterilized. It’s why he’s not at work with me. Life’s given him a higher purpose and he’s tending to his most basic gifts.

We hire a new guy, Zig. Just Zig and short for nothing. I tell Zig of Mike but Zig’s the type of ubiquitous one-upper that’s haunted me since grade school. His sister, he claims, has a tail. He’s saying, Great, eyelids, sure, but my sister, well her tailbone, understand, it just kept growing. “Dude, she wags it, so this ain’t no spina bifida. Don’t think it’s spina bifida.”

“But is it still growing? Yes. No. No, I don’t think it’s spina bifida.”

“That’s what I’m saying, dude.”

I can’t look at the guy, at his lopsided shoulders and that single, creepy-pink cheek. Do I pursue more mention of Mike? No. Nor how the first time I found Turbo inverted. How, trembling, I placed his cold orange form on my desk for two minutes. All of it was beyond my scope. I waited without realizing I was waiting. Then his tiny hinged mouth made a human sound and it was back in the tank, upright. Done eating, he was fine. Wagging around the bubbly treasure chest. Through the plastic plant.

Worse than the one-upping is how Zig won’t talk simultaneous with work. No, he must stop after a declaration. Stop and stare out at the lot like he’s receiving some message from beyond the sands of time. Only after considering the weight of his clichés, does he get back to scrubbing. Scrubbing for a minute tops and then again interrupting himself: “Look, I like you fine, but any dude—I mean, any—makes fun of Amy’s fucking tail, he’s a smashed and dead man.”

“Amy?”

“My sister? Man, I just goddamn told you about her, remember?”

I refuse answer in hopes he’ll work. He doesn’t work, so I double my effort. So sloppy now. If I continue, I’ll be livid with myself. “Here’s a good technique to try,” I say, and I hand him the electric, foaming brush. There’s a flicker of optimism when he gets the hint, starts swiping the tires, patting the chassis, but then I blow it. “Who would do that?” I say. “To your—to Amy, who would do that? I mean, what’s funny about a girl with a tail?”

Zip straightens as much as his shoulders will allow. Leaning mean and ironic on the still foaming brush, he eyeballs me with heavy suspicion.

“Smashed and dead,” I say. “How does that work?”

“Don’t,” he says, and the bug, me, I’m freed from the hand that’s cupped to the ear. Freed, only to crawl under every wrong shoe.

Later I explain to Morgan about the Zig talking/not working dilemma and Morgan schedules an evaluation shift. After that, Morgan cans the guy. This does not go smoothly. Zig, Morgan says, was quite generous in blaming me. So I’m working three shifts alone, but it’s fine. The singular heap of responsibility, it used to be an impending fear, but now it’s happened and I’m fine. More than fine. Because it’s how I account to myself that Mike and Zig, these guys are just guys. They’re not measuring sticks. They’re not thermostats or whatever. Not stopwatches or rule books or protractors. Just guys. And I’m one too, but different. So they’re in the past—like deep, deep rearview. That was then. And now it’s about energy, stamina, personal drive. No problem.

New routine: before work I carbo-load, and hard. I make certain to consume a complete meal at Bernadette’s. Like lick the plate. The line cook, he comes out adjusting his hairnet and calling me Yak. The Yak. It’s neither something new nor special. Our sophomore year of high school, this one—his name now lost to me—vanished but then here he is, reappeared sixteen years later with muttonchops, obscenely curly hair and a scent of cumin. It’s Nicaragua, he says, all of it. Then he motions to himself with a long sweep. “My time in Central America. Living on an island called The Breasts, my man. Living between two volcanoes like these crazy titties and, me, all my days, I’m goddamn fishing for fresh-water sharks!”

Whether or not I want to be awed, I am. Next thing I’m fingering a line of welts on the guy’s forearm. When I comment they look more like cigarette burns than the bites of a large-predator, he shrugs and says, “I think so, too.”

I think so, too! The understatement! The crisp breath of modesty! So I’m gushing, going right off about Turbo, about Mike. No way! That’s so wild, Yak-man! That’s what he says, it’s so wild and you’re so wild. And how he says this works completely. Makes it sound like it means more than anyone else can make it mean. Then he grows abruptly grave. A hand on my shoulder, he’s saying that maybe Mike’s time, who knows, maybe his time came? He says, “Listen, Yak, surgery’s still not all lasers and sonic healing—maybe this friend of yours, maybe botched anesthesia, maybe painful blindness which triggered suicide?” He says, “For who can say the hour, who can say the time? Yak, we have trajectories, each and every one of us. The Challenger, our fifth-grade year, was it not just as beautiful, as meaningful, as purposeful, in its amputated intent? Ka-boom.” 

Ka-boom. He leaves me with this while retrieving my Denver omelet. When he returns I think I’ll be teeming with brotherhood for the man, but he hovers while I eat and my goodwill sours. I’m thinking, There’re other people in this café. I’m thinking, Other people waiting for biscuits and pulp-free orange juice and this line cook is just rolling his shoulders and stroking his part-beard and going on and on like were in some dismissive cahoots.  

“The Yak! The Yak! Here we are! What’s become of us! Your goldfish! Your best friend with eyelids and a monkey sister! Don’t think I’m trying to compete because this is not what I’m about. I’m about expanding the tenors of our conversation, right? You and I, Yak, we’re deconstructing the monstrous line between science and entertainment. Did I overcook your eggs? Does that even matter in light of what our shared rhetoric is cooking up, right now, in each of these coinciding anecdotes? Here’s some cheese to your butter, so to speak: My roommate in college, well this boy only shit once a month. Once a month, Yak! Guy’s a body-builder, drinks ten protein shakes a day. Whey. Milk plasma. Ten a day.”

He holds up his fingers, but he’s only got nine and a nub. “But this turd….” He closes one fist, sets the other over his heart. “This turd, this single turd, coal-black, size of an acorn. I swear it.”

I chew, refuse to nod. Who am I becoming to the other customers? Managing a taut swallow, I whisper, “Man, that is—” 

“No, I get it! You’re eating, Yak! Enjoy! But a month of food! Stuffed inside you! Don’t we have nine meters of intestines, but how many feet is that? It doesn’t convert—that’s my point! And my roomie, he didn’t make … didn’t have flatulent. I don’t think he could. But think about it! It’s nature as unnatural. Isn’t that what we’re talking about here? What we’ve been talking about? Yak?”

In what I initially categorize as a moment of weakness, but then immediately re-categorize as a moment of weakness wrapped in thoughtful solidarity, I tell Morgan about the cook’s roommate of the single turd. Morgan’s helping because replacing Zig proves no cake walk. But we’re in a good groove, talking and working, and it’s not spring but definitely not summer. We’re in shorts, t-shirts, and I assume we’re both ashamed of our winter skin though this new sun’s like an IV drip and, for the most part, I’m happy.

“Sure, it’s Unnature,” Morgan says. “Unnature, that two-headed whore and mother of anti-matter! Like my own boy, for no reason, well, he fears of ticks. The kid’ll hold his poop for days. Where’s the connection? Shit and ticks? Do you see it? I don’t see it. But it’s there. At least for my son. Try telling him it’s not? It’s like those Mexican guys in Texas. They get pulled over seventy times a month. Pulled over by white cops. I don’t want to be the one to tell them that race is purely an intellectual construct, do you? My son has a temper that is strictly nature, not nurture. In fact they all do, all our kids. But hold a turd in for a month? That’s not resolve, that’s conspiracy!”   

By break time I’m informed that Morgan’s got three total, meaning kids, and a mostly pretty wife of the handle K, for Kendra. I have not met K and, as family’s not allowed in our workspace, I most likely never will. But now I’m aware she has only one kidney. One kidney, and she grew up in The United Arab Emirates. Where’s that? Yes, this is certainly my response, but does such questioning stop my mind from first growing palm trees and slathering them in bright black oil? No. “Do you want kids?”

We’re finishing up washing the last of the fleet, when Morgan asks this. 

“No,” I say.

“No?”

“I need a wife first.”

“Ha ha! Ha ha, you need a wife first!” 

Morgan is not a handsome man, all lines and scraggles, his face something drawn too quickly by a child. I only say this because his laugh is more handsome than anything physical. It’s so handsome I have to laugh delicately in its presence. So I do, and we laugh and laugh, laughing at me. We laugh until I tell him he’s right, and that I know, I know—a wife first!—I goddamn know! And then we’re done. Brushes rinsed, hoses wrapped, buckets emptied, and I do have a son, and still no one knows, Morgan included.

The boy, he’s with his mother, Cammie. Here, listen: Turbo, he’s from Cammie. It’s how she left me, a note: SO YOU DON’T FORGET WE’LL DO FINE WITHOUT YOU, HERE’S A SICK FISH.

Every month I mail $365 to Vandenburg, WV, 25273. When sealing the envelopes I imagine weeping willows and swimming holes and the tang-smoked odor of back porch grills. This boy, he’s the first thing on my mind every morning. Same dream where he’s leaning on a green mailbox and chewing a straw. Something’s wrong with him but I can’t see it. I always assume it’s his toes. Under his shoes, they’re webbed. Dressing for work, feeding Turbo, watching him drift slowly over to his back, I have no idea what my son weighs, what his voice sounds like, his laugh, if he cries easy or not and whether or not it’s because he’s got beast hair all over the face, got a half a sister grown right out of his belly— 

“Adios, Zi—Zach. Shit! Hey, almost called you Zig!”

Morgan’s yelling as I walk toward the back lot, toward my car.

I turn, shout, “That jerk’s sister had a tail!”

“Come on!”

Over my shoulder, I call back, “Spina bifida!”

“How long?”

“Amy!’

“How long a tail?”

“Half a foot. He said if I told anyone he’d kick my ass.”

Morgan puts his finger to his mouth. “Shhhhhh!” Then he takes the finger and wags it over his butt. 

But what’s this? A vehement orange muscle car idles beside my own. Its windows tinted, chrome perfect, I know what it means. So I stop in the cool sun and turn a slow circle. Amy, Amy Bo Bamee, Fe Fi Fo Famee. My heart does not pound, my hairline does not leak. I step over, tap on the window. Zig, I’m going to say, what did you expect of me? It’s evolution, I’m going to say, that’s who owns us, owns even you. For serious, dude, check it out: We’re alive, maintenance or not.